Horizon Storms (4 page)

“We are not alone. We care for the trees, and they care for us. We will never abandon each other. This is the source of our strength, and together we will all get through our ordeal,” Father Idriss had pronounced when, shortly after the attack, he called the survivors together.

Now support ladders and pulleys, makeshift ramps, and walkways were erected against the main fungus-reef tree as crews salvaged what they could. Adults worked to clear debris and charred mushroom flesh from the lower levels, while cautious younger children crawled onto precarious perches, marking safe routes for the heavier adult workers. Celli remembered when she and Estarra had climbed to the top levels of the giant mushroom to harvest the tender whitish meat Beneto loved so well. . . .

Fortunately, since their initial attack here, the hydrogues had been preoccupied with a new conflict against the faeros and had not returned to crush the worldforest. But Celli took little heart from that. There was too much death and destruction around her.

From above, she heard a shout of surprise, then moans of grief. In one of the fungus-reef chambers, a child explorer had just found an asphyxiated woman. Others made their way across the hardened fringes to where they could drag the victim out. Celli had known the woman, a family friend who made delicious treats from forest berries. Her heart sank, but her grief had no further to go; each fresh drop of cold tragedy ran like water off an already saturated cloak. Reynald, Beneto, Lica, Kari, Ren—the names 4

rolled through her conscience, one after another. She was terrified she might forget somebody—and that didn’t seem fair. They deserved to be remembered. Each one of them.

Not wanting to be at the base camp when the workers brought down the woman’s body, Celli went to her grandparents. “I want to go where I’m needed most, Grandmother. Send me out.”

“I know you’re impatient, dear.” Old Lia’s watery eyes seemed extremely tired. “We’re all trying to decide which work is most important.”

Her grandfather scratched his seamed cheek. “Every day we’ve been doing triage for the forest.”

Uthair and Lia were busily keeping track of scouting teams, scribing notes and making records that only they could decipher. Normally, the green priests could connect to the worldtrees to see the whole scope of the forest, but the magnitude of the destruction was so overwhelming that many of them could not sort through the visual information to make sense of it all.

The old couple spread out detailed satellite images taken by EDF

ships, showing the extent of burned and frozen areas like a blight across the landscape. Reeling green priests had already shared this information with the trees through telink, but the forest already felt its enormous injuries, which made direct and clear communication difficult. Her grandmother pointed to an unmarked spot where hundreds of acres of broken and toppled trees lay flattened as if they had been no more than stalks of grain in the path of a hurricane. “No one has gone into this area yet.”

“I’ll go take a look.” Celli was glad to have a useful assignment she could do by herself. She welcomed the responsibility. After all, she was now as old as Estarra had been when she’d married King Peter. Everyone on Theroc, down to the youngest child, was being forced to grow up too quickly.

She sprinted off, picking her way through the haunted forest. The fast blaze had scoured away the underbrush, but the hydrogues’ icewave had been like dynamite, blasting trees into kindling, shattering them into tangles of fibrous pulp.

Celli moved lightly on graceful legs that were muscular from climbing, running, and dancing. She imagined she was practicing to be a treedancer

again, a profession she’d aspired to for many years. She had trained diligently, seeing herself as half ballerina and half marathon runner.

As she ran, she encountered more human bodies—broken statues killed by the hydrogues’ icewave or horribly burned cadavers drawn into a mummified fetal position as muscles and sinews tightened in the heat. Far too many had died, both trees and humans.

But Celli forged on, her feet sending up puffs of ash. Each living tree she could report would be one little victory for Theroc. Each such triumph would gradually tip the scales against the despair the hydrogues had brought.

As she explored in slow, broad zigzags through the devastation, the surviving trees were few and far between, but she touched each one briefly, murmuring words of encouragement and hope. Scrambling on her hands and knees, she climbed through a tangle of toppled trees as wide as a house. Though the jagged branches scratched her, she pressed forward and reached an artificial clearing in which all the trees had been knocked down in a circular pattern, as if something huge had exploded there, leaving an open area at the center.

Celli caught her breath. In the middle of the circle of destruction, she saw a curved shell of smoke-blackened crystal, the shattered fragments of what had been an alien warglobe. Pyramid-shaped protrusions thrust like claws through the spherical hull sections.

A hydrogue ship.

She had seen these awful things before, though this warglobe was nothing more than a fractured wreck, half of it strewn around the clearing.

Celli couldn’t help but clench her fists while her lips curled in an angry but triumphant snarl.

Thus far, the EDF—for all their sophisticated weapons—had achieved little success against the hydrogues’ diamond armor. Celli was sure the Earth military would be interested in having a specimen of an enemy warship that they could analyze up close—and she intended to give it to them, if there was any chance it might help in the fight.

Flushed with her discovery, Celli raced back toward the fungus-reef city, happy to have good news to share at last.

6

25MAGE-IMPERATOR JORA’H

Mere days after his ascension, Mage-Imperator Jora’h went to watch the handlers prepare his father’s corpulent body for its dazzling incineration.

He had never expected to become Mage-Imperator under such circumstances, but the Ildiran Empire was his to rule now. Jora’h wanted to make changes, to improve life for his people, to make amends to those who had suffered . . . but he was bound by obligations and commitments, forced to continue schemes he had not previously known about. He felt trapped in a web woven from myriad sticky strands—unless he could find a way around them.

But first, before he could face those tangled responsibilities, Jora’h had to preside over the funeral of his poisoned father.

Attender kithmen carried his chrysalis chair into the chamber where the dead Mage-Imperator had been laid out for his final preparations.

Jora’h sat silently on the spacious levitating throne, looking down at the slack features of his father. Resenting him.

Treacheries, schemes, lies—how could he endure everything he knew?

Jora’h was now the mind, soul, and figurehead of the Ildiran race. It was not appropriate for him to curse his father’s memory, but that didn’t stop him. . . .

The previous Mage-Imperator had killed himself, seeing his own death as the only way to force his son to inherit the Empire’s cruel secrets. Jora’h was still reeling from the revelations. Much as he disliked what he had learned, he understood the rationale for those hateful deeds. He had never suspected the hidden danger to the Ildiran Empire or the slim, desperate hope of salvation, which could be achieved only if he continued the experiments on Dobro.

Jora’h was handsome, smooth-featured, with golden hair bound back into a braid that would eventually grow long, like his father’s. Over time, his classic features might change, too, as he evolved into his sedentary, supposedly benevolent role. His sheltered life as Prime Designate had not M A G E - I M P E R A T O R J O R A ’ H

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prepared him to imagine the awful things that were happening where he couldn’t see them. But now, through the thism, he knew everything. It was exactly as his father had intended, both a gift and a curse.

And now he was compelled to continue the same acts, when all he wanted was to see his beloved and imprisoned Nira again. If nothing else, he would free her. That, at least, he could do—as soon as he finished the transition of leadership and found a way to leave the Prism Palace.

Now, exercising extreme care, gaunt handlers washed the former leader’s heavy body, preparing it. Cyroc’h’s ample flesh sagged on his bones like a rubbery fabric that would easily peel away from his skeleton.

Diminutive servants, gibbering with despair, pushed forward freneti-cally to assist, but they had no place here during this ceremony, and Jora’h sternly sent them away. Some of them would no doubt throw themselves from a turret of the Prism Palace in their grief and misery. But their misery could not compare to his own dismay at all he had learned. No one could help him decide how best to rule, or what to do at Dobro. . . .

“How long will it be?” he asked the handlers.

The stony-faced men looked up from their work. Their leader said in a grim voice, “For an event of such magnitude, Liege, this must be our best work. It is the most important duty we will ever perform.”

“Of course.” Jora’h continued to observe in silence.

Wearing armored gloves, the handlers reached into pots and withdrew handfuls of silvery-gray paste, which they spread thickly and lovingly over the dead Mage-Imperator. They made certain to cover every speck of exposed skin.

Even in the dimness of the preparation room, the paste simmered and began to smoke. The handlers increased their pace, but did not grow sloppy under Jora’h’s watchful gaze. When the Mage-Imperator was completely slathered, they wrapped his body with an opaque cloth, then announced their readiness.

“To the roof,” Jora’h said from his chrysalis chair. “And call all of the Designates.”

The dead Mage-Imperator’s sons, along with Jora’h’s own children, assembled on the highest transparent platform atop the spherical domes of 8

the Prism Palace. The dazzling light of multiple suns washed down on them.

As Jora’h waited in the bright sun, ready to fulfill his role in the ceremony, he scanned the faces of his brothers, the former Designates, who had come from splinter colonies around the Empire, regardless of the shortage of stardrive fuel. Jora’h’s own group of sons—the next generation of Designates—stood grim and respectful beside their oldest noble brother, Thor’h, who was now the Prime Designate. Pery’h, the Designate-in-waiting for the planet Hyrillka, stood next to his brother Daro’h, the Dobro Designate-in-waiting; others clustered in ranks next to their uncles, whom they would soon replace.

Their awareness that the Hyrillka Designate could not attend and still lay unconscious in the Prism Palace’s infirmary cast a deeper pall over the ceremony. Though his bruises and contusions had healed, Rusa’h remained lost and unresponsive in a deep sub-thism sleep, probably having nightmares of the hydrogue attack on his citadel palace on Hyrillka. It was doubtful the Designate would ever awaken, and his planet would soon need a new leader. Though not yet prepared, Pery’h would have to take his place without Rusa’h as his mentor. . . .

Handler kithmen delivered Cyroc’h’s wrapped body to a raised platform and adjusted magnifiers and mirrors. Everything proceeded in somber silence. Silently respectful carriers brought the chrysalis chair ad-jacent to the indistinct form of Cyroc’h, still shrouded in its opaque cloth.

Jora’h lifted his gaze to his brothers and sons as he grasped the thick cloth with his left hand. “My father served as Mage-Imperator during a century of peace and also in recent times of crisis. His soul has already followed the threads of thism to the realm of the Lightsource. Now, here, his physical form will join the light as well.”

In a single abrupt motion, Jora’h yanked away the cloth to expose the soft form of the dead Mage-Imperator. The intense light of seven suns pounded down, activating the shimmering metallic paste that covered the dead leader’s skin. Piercing white flames instantly engulfed the smothered, sagging body. The photothermal paste did not burn the body so much as dissolve it, making the skin and muscle and fat dissociate into the air, glowing, sparkling. . . .

The fallen Mage-Imperator vanished in a cloud of writhing steam and

smoke. The air cleared. All that remained were Cyroc’h’s glowing bones, impregnated with bioluminescent compounds. His clean, empty skull was only a symbol of the great things that he had been . . . and the dreadful things he had done in the name of preserving the Ildiran Empire.

As Mage-Imperator, Jora’h’s immediate obligation was to dispatch his Designates-in-waiting to seal the process of governmental transition. Then he could finally find a way to free Nira. He turned to his sons and his brothers. “And now the Empire must move on.”

35BASIL WENCESLAS

King Peter was in fine form as he stood on the Whisper Palace balcony to address the great crowds. It would be one of his most important speeches in recent years.

Watching the young King from his observation window, Chairman Basil Wenceslas straightened his expensive suit, touched his steel-gray hair.

Hidden cameras around the Whisper Palace gave him alternate views that allowed him to study Peter’s body language, the barely readable expressions on his smooth young face, the intensity of his darting blue eyes.

Good . . . so far.

At least this time when he’d read the scripted words, the King had not objected to them. Instead, Peter had looked directly into the dapper Chairman’s gray eyes and visibly swallowed. “You’re certain this is what we need to do, Basil?” There was no sarcasm in his voice, no taunt in his words. His dyed blond hair was perfect, his artificially colored blue eyes bright and sincere.

“We have studied every alternative. The people must be made to understand that there is no choice.”

With a sigh, Peter had set down the display pad, having memorized 10